driving alone at night

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You get out of work at your part-time job and walk towards your car. The parking lot is so well-lit that everything beyond it is invisible; it seems infinitely dark. Your car is parked towards the edge of the lot, so as you approach it the surrounding darkness becomes slightly clearer. You get in the car. Turn the key in the ignition, buckle your seatbelt, plug your phone into the aux cord. What would you like listen to? [[Music.]] <<set $music to false>> <link href='https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Oxygen:300' rel='stylesheet' type='text/css'>

Unfortunately, you are nearly out of memory on your phone, and the wi-fi at your job is weak, so the only thing you have loaded is a mismatched [[YouTube playlist|https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyInyz95cRFvc9dq8jm61ruPgdiNT9qBc]] compiled of songs you've recently heard. Despite the obnoxious ads, you don't think it's bad. Do you want to listen? [[Yes|one]]. [[No, I will listen to something else|one]]. [[No, I like the silence|two]].

<img src="images/stoplight.gif" width="433" height="325"> You quite like this song. You pull out of the lot, onto the city street. You can head home, or you can hop on the freeway. You sort of feel like driving aimlessly. [[Home]]. [[Freeway]]. <<set $music to true>>

<img src="images/gv.gif" width="433" height="325"> Despite your longing for some solitude and space to clear your head, you know that you have work tomorrow and shouldn't be using your gas to drive aimlessly. [[You get home quickly.|home2]]

<img src="images/hillcrest.gif" width="433" height="325"> The roads are almost empty. It's the sole benefit to working the night shift. Most people are home by now: sleeping or talking with their families or doing something else more domestic, normal. Not you. You are here, alone in the dark, thinking, listening, [[reminiscing|driveintro]].

The porch light is on. The hallway inside the door is warm. You slip off your shoes and put your backpack on a chair at the end of the hall. You can hear your brother in his room, watching something that contains canned laughter. You walk to your room and flop down on the bed. You stare at your ceiling, frustrated without cause. Just like every other day this month, you feel dissatisfied. Maybe you'll know why tomorrow. You doubt it. <<timed 12s>> the end [[again?|titlepage]] <</timed>>

<img src="images/streetlights.gif" width="433" height="325"> You enter a span of the freeway that is lined on both sides by streetlamps. Orange-white light cycles through the interior of your car, rhythmic, silent. You drove through a similar stretch of freeway on the way back from your first funeral. It was late. You don't want to think about it. But you do anyway. The memorial had been nice. Comforting. Sad. The moon shone bright and the freeway was endless and you felt angry and hopeless and somehow alive and yet also impulsive and destructive. And fragile. Wildly, tempestuously fragile. The impulsiveness of it all was unexpected, as was the entire range of emotions (you attributed it to having poor emotional intelligence and little concept of how to manage your feelings [how ironic, you thought, to think about thinking and think that you're bad at it]), and you sat cross-legged in the passenger seat because your feet were cold but you couldn't bear to put back on your shoes or tights. And the light in the car looked like the light now, beating and pulsing, in ways that make you think of the ocean. You wished you were in the ocean, that night, or moving faster, hitting [[something.]]

<img src="images/gif1.gif" width="433" height="325"> When you think back on it now, it seems smaller. In light of your current post-grad aimlessness, you've been thinking about the size of things a lot, about things enormous at occurence but minute in the distant aftermath. It is the most true when thinking about <<if $hs is false>>[[high school]]<</if>><<if $hs is true>>high school<</if>>. But now you feel it again with other things. For all of the hopefulness that accompanies the thought that this will mean nothing in two, five, ten years, it terrifies you to imagine that this bigness will surely be replaced by other bigness, and so on, forver, because that largness is unknown and <<if $hs is true>>[[looming]],<</if>><<if $hs is false>>looming,<</if>> all-encompassing in its foreignness. <<set $highschool to 0>> <<set $rumors to false>> <<set $boy to false>> <<set $parties to false>>

<img src="images/gif10.gif" width="433" height="325"> Earlier today you were struck with the acute and short-lived desire to go back in time and re-do it all somehow, until realizing that only those who were wildly successful in their youth are allowed to genuinely wish such things. Fortunately and unfortunately, that was not you. You didn't spend your time at <<if $parties is false>>[[parties]]<<else>> parties<</if>> or with <<if $boy is false>>[[boys]] <<else>> boys<</if>> or spreading <<if $rumors is false>> [[rumors]] <<else>> rumors <</if>> or participating in anything that teenage movie characters did. Still, you missed it sometimes. <<if $highschool is 3>> But you know that you shouldn't waste your time thinking about [[that.|restlessness.]]<</if>> <<if $highschool is 4>> But you know that you shouldn't waste your time thinking about [[that.|restlessness.]]<</if>> <<if $highschool is 5>> But you know that you shouldn't waste your time thinking about [[that.|restlessness.]]<</if>> <<set $hs to true>>

<img src="images/gif2.gif" width="433" height="325"> Tonight it only frightens you a moderate amount. Tonight you drive and imagine the rapidly-passing freeway as a seven-laned beast, imagining it like your chin rests on the surface of a big dining table, like you're staring down your nose at a new world. It unfolds before you quickly, and you know that soon you will have to act on it; whether to move, which job to take, to which city you will relocate. A piece of you wishes that you could go back and ponder everything again. But doesn't everyone want to do that? Isn't everyone overwhelmed? To wallow in it would be selfish, you think. But perhaps you're being too hard on yourself. Without realizing, you've driven to the end of the [[freeway|freeway choice]].

<img src="images/gif3.gif" width="433" height="325"> You find yourself on a navy base, and you would rather not drive around aimlessly here. You hop back on the freeway, headed in the opposite direction. Where will you go? Which exit? <<set $path1 to false>> <<set $path2 to false>> <<set $path3 to false>> [[The one that takes you east|94]]. [[The one that takes you towards your school|SDSU]].

<img src="images/gif4.gif" width="433" height="325"> You rarely drive on this <<if $path1 is true>>section of<</if>>freeway. It's all long stretches between offramps, darkness, scattered boulders along hills. Something about it unnerves you. But you drive on into the vastness, ignoring the pit forming in your stomach. [[You don't like uncertainty.]] <<if $path1 is false>><<set $path2 to true>><</if>> <<if $path1 is true>><<set $path3 to true>><</if>>

<img src="images/gif5.gif" width="433" height="325"> Or rather, not your school currently, but your alma mater. It's strange to think of it like that: at once belonging to you and a part of the past. Your stomach drops at the notion, like you're standing on a line that you can't bear to cross, despite your inability to stay behind. You've tried to think about it [[less]]. <<if $path2 is false>><<set $path1 to true>><</if>> <<if $path2 is true>><<set $path3 to true>><</if>>

<img src="images/dt.gif" width="433" height="325"> The last time you were there was to pick up a friend. A song played loud over the speakers near the baggage claim: "you put your arms around me and I'm home." You stood there alone, waiting. There was a man with flowers, and a woman too, both waiting for their respective girlfriends. You stood alone, waiting as people filed out. The thought of that life, that togetherness ever existing in your own world seemed so distant and unlikely that your throat tightened. You tried to translate your thoughts so as to not think so quickly: <<replacelink>> "Je veux crier. <<becomes>> Pleurer? <<becomes>> Je ne sais le mot correct. <<becomes>> Je veux aller chez moi. <<becomes>> Non, le chez de mes parents. <<becomes>> Je ne sais pas si cela chez moi existe. <<becomes>> Je ne sais pas si chez moi existe. <<becomes>> Dans San Diego? <<becomes>> À DC? <<becomes>> À Londres? <<becomes>> Montreal? <<becomes>> Une autre ville, pays? <<becomes>> Où? <<becomes>> Et quand? <<becomes>> Une personne? <<becomes>> Un homme? <<becomes>> [[Une femme, peut-être]]?" The final thought caught you off guard. <<endreplacelink>>

<img src="images/gif10.gif" width="433" height="325"> <<replacelink>><<if $parties is true>>No, you think, that's not entirely true, no. There were a few times.<</if>> You try to think back. Your memories are hazy and reek of cinnamon and... something... whip cream scented... it burned the back of your throat. Hazy memories. Tabletop games and cards and heavy mascara and the music loud and you in socks, dancing. Crowding close around too-small tables, sharing chairs, stools, the floor when enough people were gathered to talk. <<becomes>>The whole place hazy, hard to see through, disgustingly Californian and so, so cliched. You loved it though, you did, some piece of you, the piece that wanted to be included and pretty and smiling, your cheeks red and your hands emphasizing what you were saying and your laugh loud and unapologetic, and then walking home to your friend's house and skipping through the streets and sneaking in and sleeping on couches, blankets on the floor. <<becomes>>Other students had nights like that far more often than you, and you were mostly glad of it. It's tiring to be pretty and dance (in socks with your hands above your head). [[But that doesn't matter now.|high school]] <<set $highschool to $highschool + 1>> <<set $parties to true>><<endreplacelink>>

<img src="images/gif2.gif" width="433" height="325"> <<replacelink>><<if $parties is true>>And that wasn't entirely true either. <</if>>You could almost pass over these details if you were recounting them to someone else. You remind yourself that the moments mean so little when telling the whole of your life. But here, in the dark, you remember it vividly. Black hair and tan and always wearing beat up sneakers, which you found endearing at first. Eyes starkly darker than the exact shade of blue that everything seemed to be mid-July, when the sky was cloudless and the cement hot. You remember him, he who smelled of fresh linens and operated under the assumption that he was smarter than you. He attended the few parties you did and you talked to him for ages, to the point that you frequently frustrated your friends by holding them up. "When the conversation is over!" you'd assert, feeling loud and brave. The following Monday he'd smile at you during class, leaving you embarrassingly smitten. <<set $boy to true>> <<becomes>> You talked to him outside at the last party you attended. It was near graduation and the backyard air was cool, putting you on edge (but gratefully; your shaking hands existed because of the April weather, you could say). After what felt like no time your friends came out, sleepily. You obliged, feeling guilty, feeling like everything was large and ending. You went to hug him goodbye. "Stay," he whispered. You didn't. But then you got back to the house, still giddy. Two blocks away was this boy, this wildly smart, incredibly attractive boy who no doubt thought he was better than you, who you knew was too rude for you, who you knew found you interesting and cute and intriguing. Despite what you had heard, you were curious. You texted him: <<becomes>> <div id="sms">"Let's go on a walk." </div> <<becomes>> You were grateful for the ability of SMS to hide your shaking hands. It was the weather. <<becomes>> You sat on the curb while waiting, wearing pajama pants and the same low-backed top you wore earlier. It was still a little cold, and he had put on a sweatshirt. You walked down the street with him for a while, keeping your distance. At one point you teased him, and he laughed, pulling you into a joke-y headlock, walking the rest of the way with his arm around your shoulder. He told you about his future, you yours. You admitted to him that you were jealous of the college to which he was accepted, and he admitted that he was nervous. You wanted to ask him out. You came close to it. You trailed off, something about a school dance. He laughed. You started to say something, but he stopped you: "--I'll probably ask (who was it? Some other girl...) because she also got into the school I'm going to." <<becomes>> You didn't respond; you were defeated. You walked home alone, when it was so late that it was almost light out. You let yourself in, slipped under the blanket on the couch, slept. Dreamt of the boy, knowing that he thought he was smarter than you. When you woke up your lids felt heavy from a lack of sleep and an excess of mascara, you still wore the low-backed top (at the time your neighbor told you that you looked good in it; she'd said "your spine, your spine," and you didn't know what she meant by that but she spoke softly and admiringly, as if it were some incredible gift to be lanky, with a visible spine, and you didn't understand but you knew that she meant that you were pretty and that was something you had wanted to be, and walking home alone in the top, you were angry, because it hadn't mattered that someone thought you were pretty, and you had started to believe that you never really were, and you felt cheated by the whole thing, positively cheated.). The novelty of tpretty had worn off. The novelty of him had worn off. [[But that was a long time ago.|high school]]<<set $highschool to $highschool + 1>><<endreplacelink>>

<img src="images/gif4.gif" width="433" height="325"> <<replacelink>> <<if $boys or $parties is true>>And that too, a lie.<</if>> You wanted to remember it like that: everyone friends, no one saying things unfounded. The worst rumors were the ones by which you should have never been offended, and mostly you were ignored. You weren't pretty enough to be noticed, not popular enough to draw lies, not mean or involved enough to say anything about those you didn't know. Another girl said something about you one time: <<becomes>> "I think you're gay too, but you won't admit it." You had never contemplated it before, and you scoffed at it, subconsciously thinking of the boy across the room. She pressed on, insistent. You pressed back, no, really, no, sorry. The next day the girl and some of the boys gathered nearby during class, discussing celebrities, some then-popular actress with dark hair and tight clothing. "Hey," called the boy with whom you were livid but still slightly smitten, "I bet you think she's hot." The look on his face. You were no longer a conspirator, but a closeted girl, and one who needed to be outed. "No." He scoffed back, his mind made up. [[You try not to think about it too much.|high school]]<<set $highschool to $highschool + 1>> <<set $rumors to true>> <<endreplacelink>>

<img src="images/gif5.gif" width="433" height="325"> Less now than two months ago, at the time of your graduation. Less now than even two weeks ago. Because it's looming. Because worrying is unproductive. Because it was eating you alive when it shouldn't have been. You’d somehow fallen into a pattern where every night after 11 you inevitably started to think about your life and the future, etc. et. al. It was exhausting, not in physical way, but in the "I’m-sick-of-thinking-about-this" way, in the way where your friends sighed when you brought it up. It was the same stuff you've been thinking about since you were 16, and you suspect you’ll be thinking about it your entire life. You felt stuck, in this city and in your own head. You were--you sometimes still are-- plagued by questions of worth, achievement, lovability (how you hated those words). You wanted-- you want-- to be unstuck. You want motivation and direction. You were so much more sure of things when you were younger, before you knew all of the things that were [[available]] to you.

<img src="images/gv.gif" width="433" height="325"> Even thinking about it now, you feel both frustrated and whiny. How dare you complain about opportunity, privilege? You remember your parents and their parents, your best friends' parents, none of them college graduates. You're lucky; you know it. But is this success? A diploma and the propensity to aim for whatever, without the belief in your ability to achieve anything? [[You aren't sure.]]

<img src="images/tunnel.gif" width="433" height="325"> You drove him home a few hours later, after your chest started to ache from all the caffeine and you could feel it in your throat. While driving, home you listened to the music you listened to when you were sixteen and planning for a life far away, the one that doesn’t exist in reality anymore. (It technically never did.) The alternate universe. In that world you were on a subway alone, tired. You were not listening to anything but the sound of the cabin racing underground. You were in debt. You wanted to text the boy who you would maybe be dating. In that world you were yourself but not yourself. You unlocked the door to your home and thought about the people who have lived in more than six places. Among them your mom, best friend, and a number of others you vaguely know. You have just had the one. It’s nice and it’s not. How many places do you move to in the alternate universe? How many people do you meet? How many big museums do you visit? What books do you read? Are you happier there? <<if $path1 is true>>Ahead of you now, the freeway turns slightly to the left. [[You drive on.|94]]<</if>> <<if $path2 is true>>Driving down the same freeway now, you almost forgot that this freeway took you to your [[school|SDSU]].<</if>>

<img src="images/streetlights.gif" width="433" height="325"> But you do anyways, and always. While in class, while laying in <<if $au2 is false>>[[bed|au2]]<</if>><<if $au2 is true>>bed<</if>>, while walking to your car at <<if $au3 is false>>[[night|AU3]]<</if>><<if $au3 is true>>night<</if>>. Perhaps it's pointless to think about all of this. Perhaps you're deeply unhappy. You think about that a lot. [[You shouldn't.|nope]]

<img src="images/streetlights.gif" width="433" height="325"> Another world in which your bed is miles away, with different sheets. It seems silly to think about the thought of it, a life so transformed by different bed-sheets in a different bed in a big city where one needed to have different bed-sheets. And the duvet, heavier, for when it snowed. You think of the snow a lot. It seems unreal to you, far off, like measles or storm cellars. You know it exists in theory; you've seen the photos, heard the horrors and joys from your friends and their phone calls, texts, Facebook posts (and even the posts of those you'd not consider a friend, but classmate, acquaintance). Still, you can't hypothesize it. You have only seen it clearly in [[dreams|3000mi]]. <<set $dream to false>>

<img src="images/streetlights.gif" width="433" height="325"> Another world in which he is here. You take classes with him and eat lunch together and want for no one else's company. And you study with him in the library, and you don't have to worry about not fitting in with anyone, because you fit in with him. It's not that you were lonely, but that you drove home alone every day for four years. It was tiring and made you prone to daydreams, even ones that were [[pointless to imagine.|alternate universes.]] <<set $au3 to true>>

<img src="images/tunnel.gif" width="433" height="325"> The last time you were together, you hadn't seen him (one of your favorite people in the world) in eighteen months, the day before he moved across the country and you went to the beach and cried about it for four hours. You hadn't been to his house since a year before that. On that day you beat him and another boy at their favorite board game and they were shocked, and later on the boy drove you home and you felt so seventeen, so smitten, so unsure. Two weeks after that you confessed to that boy in the very same car that you had been dishonest, that you didn’t want to just be his friend. You called your friend whose house you'd been at, who you hadn't seen in eighteen months, and he told you that the other boy was unsure too, that it was obvious (“what did you expect?”). You felt unsure [[again while in front of his house.|jpb]] <<set $phone to false>> <<set $race to false>> <<set $jpbnik to false>>

<img src="images/tunnel.gif" width="433" height="325"> Eighteen months. You worried that you would not recognize him, which was absurd but still pressing as you waited, thinking at once about high school and Oceania and Yakutsk (the joy of winning!) and talking <<if $phone is false>>[[on the phone]]<</if>><<if $phone is true>>on the phone<</if>> and <<if $race is false>>[[racing in the street|raced]]<</if>><<if $race is true>>racing in the street<</if>>, falling asleep in class, <<if $jpbnik is false>>[[on your friends' couch, on top of him.|nik]]<</if>><<if $jpbnik is true>>on your friends' couch, on top of him.<</if>> [[You waited.|jpb2]] <<set $vonnegut to false>>

<img src="images/tunnel.gif" width="433" height="325"> Oh, that was one of your favorite memories. One of the softest ones, made hazier still by time. Drunk on rum, mid-summer, recently 18, absolutely terrified of everything but in a heady and giddy and youthful and excited way. At your friends' house. Music somewhere in the kitchen, you in the backyard. "Walk me home," implored your friend. She lived just down the block, but it was late, and even though she was sober she was ambivalent. A brief and fleeting thought about the tragedy of being afraid to walk alone, but you were too pleased to give it room to grow or to speak it. "Hey hey hey," called your friend, (the boy, who you were waiting for while reminiscing) from inside the house, looking taller suddenly, yet still the same person you texted about Harry Potter, "I'll come too, so that she (you, you were the she here) doesn't have to walk back alone." So you walked. Under the same streetlights you had walked months prior with that boy who thought he was better than you. Happier now. Was it the age? The warm weather? You thought-- you knew-- it was the company. You [[felt...]]

<img src="images/tunnel.gif" width="433" height="325"> A fast friendship formed over text messages about favorite books. Was it ironic to use <div id="sms">"gr8"</div> to describe... who were you reading then? When you were 17? <<if $vonnegut is false>>[[Vonnegut.]]<</if>><<if $vonnegut is true>>Vonnegut.<</if>> And IMs sent at 11:30--late for a school night-- about lost hardcovers and awful character tropes and the upcoming history test. And emails always sent after 8, always about something pressing: "Can you read my poem for class?" "Check out this link." "Is this how you format a paper????" [[It seemed far away now.|jpb]] <<set $phone to true>>

<img src="images/tunnel.gif" width="433" height="325"> After you <nobr><<if $race is true>>raced<<elseif $race is false>>[[raced]]<</if>></nobr> him in the street, you returned to your friend's house. The olympics were on the television in a small room off from the kitchen. Much of the house was dark, but you could see the blue glow when you slipped into the front door. You went to get a glass of water and then into that room, where everyone sat: your friend who had invited you, a few of your classmates, one of your dearest friends, and, of course, your (at the time you'd have said best) friend, on the couch. "Come sit," he said, moving a pillow. You stepped over a classmate's legs and cozied in to the corner of the couch, still feeling smug that you had won the race. And then the details are foggy. "Why do you sigh like that?" he whispered. "[[I'm content]]," you murmured, no doubt sighing again.

<img src="images/tunnel.gif" width="433" height="325"> After he came out of the house, you drove to a cafe. You drank coffee despite the fact that it was two hours shy of tomorrow and shivered while he smoked. You’d never seen him smoke before. His hair was longer, still curly, blond, and always being brushed away by his hand, yours shorter but still tangled. You didn’t realize how much you had missed him until you were no longer. It didn't even feel real. It was like it was before, but different; still longwinded and effortless, but more [[focused.]]

<img src="images/tunnel.gif" width="433" height="325"> He told you stories about the city that you will likely never live in, because you were happy enough that it didn’t make you feel as if you’d made a terrible, terrible mistake in staying. You laughed about things that you have never experienced. He asked if you thought often about what would have happened had you moved. Not to “his” city, but to the other one, the one that houses baseball teams and marathons and snow. You laughed and lied to him: “never.” But it wasn't true. You knew that you’d be preparing to work at an NGO, were you there. You’d be in astronomical debt. You don’t often let your mind wander past those two. He laughed too. “Oh my god, you’d be dating (the boy from four years ago, the unsure one, all freckles and seriousness) right now.” You gave him a smile that let him know that you were aware that he was both serious and not. He shrugged to let you know that he wasn’t joking. “Well then I’m glad I’m here,” you said. You probably would have been hopelessly in love with this stupid boy, which is both awful and eerily comforting to think about. “I guess,” he conceded, “you really don’t think about it?” You lied again: “[[nope]].” <<set $au to false>>

<img src="images/streetlights.gif" width="433" height="325"> But you did nonetheless. You thought about it when you drove the back way into your neighborhood. An alternate universe in which you lived far away too. And you played hockey still. And you interned at the office of a senator of some sort. You only thought about it-- about this world-- at points in your life where you felt restless. There was no one else for whom you had had such affection, no one else to place your nervous energy on. Except... except your friend. You wanted to tell him this while drinking the coffee, but you remembered the look on his face when he told you all of the things that kept him awake at night, and suddenly you were afraid that you would scream if you opened your mouth. If you had more self-control you would have said it calmly. You would have confided in him that you thought about it when you were angry. If you were more sure of yourself you’d have told your friend that it’s tiring to think of <<if $au is false>>[[alternate universes.]]<</if>><<if $au is true>>alternate universes.<</if>> Instead of telling the truth, you changed the subject and asked him if he thought about a world in which he went to your school. “I do, because then I can be glad I got the hell out.” [[You didn't have anything to say to that.|out]] <<set $au2 to false>> <<set $au3 to false>>

<img src="images/tunnel.gif" width="433" height="325"> You felt like you could do anything. And maybe it was because you were a little drunk, but it seemed like more than that. You felt like jumping, like moving around. "I feel like I could run right now," you offered. Your sober friend laughed, annoyed with you and your inclination to joy at that moment. But the boy agreed. "Race you to that lamp." His mistake was thinking that he could beat you, but also that you wouldn't take it seriously. You ran up in front of him, arms out, hands against his chest, gently telling him to stop. Blurry in the light in the darkness. You lined up... took your marks... set.... You beat him by a good ten feet, and skipped through the streets afterwards. You laughed. He feigned-- was it feigned?-- defensiveness. "It was because--" you don't remember his excuses. You clicked your heels and zig-zagged under the streetlights, arms out, laughing. And he laughed, and your sober friend laughed too. And you walked back to the house afterwards feeling taller and even more hopeful than before and you fought the urge to wrap your arms around your friend and hug him, because a large piece of you knew that it was all ending [[soon.|jpb]]<<set $race to true>>

<img src="images/fave500.gif" width="433" height="325"> Despite your assertion that love is not a choice, despite your assertion that everyone should feel comfortable with their identity, despite your admiration the LGBT community, you have never considered that those statements could or would apply to you. [[And you feel cheated by it.]]

<img src="images/fave500.gif" width="433" height="325"> And you think of your grandma, of all people. Sitting in church and reading over the newsletter: "Homosexuality Cure; hear a lecture from converted man." How disgusting, you thought, and thank god it didn't apply to you. [[But now.]]

<img src="images/fave500.gif" width="433" height="325"> Eight years old and reading a book, recounting it to your grandmother: "and the girl is so cool! and she doesn't care what anyone thinks--" "--well you should care what some people think, like your family and the church and..." Thank god it didn't apply to you, right? [[But now.|butnow2]]

<img src="images/dt2.gif" width="433" height="325"> She'd winked at you. So slyly and naturally and... you wanted to... what did you want? What did you expect to happen? You wanted to reach out and touch her. You wanted to walk with her in the grass at the park you used to walk at as a child. You wanted to show her the small hills and tell her the stories and you wanted to feel like you were wanted, like you belonged. She's beautiful. She winked at you and you wanted to look closely at her; eyebrows hands nose eyelashes mouth mouth mouth mouth mouth. [[You wanted to kiss her.]]

<img src="images/dt2.gif" width="433" height="325"> <<replacelink>> No. <<becomes>> Yes. <<becomes>> Wait. <<becomes>> Thank god it didn't apply to you. <<becomes>> But now... <<becomes>> What if it wasn't that you liked her, but that you were lonely?? <<becomes>> That's it. <<becomes>> You'd like anyone. <<becomes>> No. <<becomes>> That was dismissive. <<becomes>> That was implying that bisexual people are just lonely. <<becomes>> [[Did you just refer to yourself as bisexual?|bi2]] <<endreplacelink>>

<img src="images/dt2.gif" width="433" height="325"> Trying to use labels like that makes your chest ache: the thought of actually liking her, of liking other girls, of dating them, of coming out to your friends, your parents; if the people at church found out, if your grandma knew. The first four made you feel heady, excited, but the feelings were quickly tempered by the notion of the latter three. You don't know. [[You are unsure.]]

<img src="images/hillcrest.gif" width="433" height="325"> Again you are on the periphery of knowing and not, belonging and not, comfortable and not (although now it makes you deeply uncomfortable). You drive into your favorite [[neighborhood|balboa]].

<img src="images/dt.gif" width="433" height="325"> It's not that you hadn't thought about it before, in an abstract way like this. In theory you thought that it would be okay. But you knew that if you were... [[if you are...|But you knew that if you were... if you are...]]

<img src="images/dt.gif" width="433" height="325"> You can't help but feel cheated by it all. Had you grown up in a home or a city or a society that was more accepting and less heteronormative-- it's unproductive to think like that. Still, you can't help but feel like you would be happier, more comfortable in what you are inclined to think of as [[deviance]] when looking at yourself.

<img src="images/streetlights.gif" width="433" height="325"> In the dream it is dark across all 3000 miles that separate you and him. It is entirely dark, except for the moon over a portion of the plains, which glints, a smile, unseen by you or him, seen only by a few dozen insomniacs, who don't know that you're asleep, or that the boy is stepping out onto the icy fire escape, but of their own things: pay-per-view porn and novels based on hit movies and the fact that nerve pain medication rarely works, but will keep you from sleeping at night, not only leaving you in pain in the morning but fiercely, crankily exhausted. They wouldn't care of you even if they had known that you were asleep and dreaming of your first day of school. Do you remember it? What you were wearing? What your teacher's name was? It matters until it doesn't, until it shows up only in dreams, while the boy steps out onto a fire escape clutching his cell phone at 3:30 a.m. (you speak the time stamp to yourself in the dream, saying it "ay-ehm" out loud like you know he would have) because he wanted to tell you something but didn't want to wake the person sleeping next to him, didn't want them to know. [[Don't think about it now.|300mi2]]

<img src="images/streetlights.gif" width="433" height="325"> When you woke up you felt guilty. You were angry with yourself. Stupid girl, developing a crush. Stupid girl, how do you think this will end? Your sister said, “you’re nervous because you’re curious.” You admitted that you were a bit, but it didn’t matter. She said “well what if he’s the love of your life!?” You laughed and said that was crazy: “things don’t work like that. Even if that were true<<if $dream is false>>[[--|3000mi3]]<</if>><<if $dream is true>>--<</if>> it doesn’t matter. What am I going to do? Stay here? No. It doesn’t matter.” She gave you that look she gives you. Because [[you could stay here.]]

<img src="images/streetlights.gif" width="433" height="325"> Don't think about how you feel about it, this person sleeping next to someone else. Don't think about them in pajamas and an overcoat, shivering on a fire escape mid-February. Don't think about their breath in the air, or how messy and slept-on their hair looks. But you will nonetheless. He unlocks the screen with shaking hands (his fingers and nose are turning red, and you know that it you'd have found it endearing, were you there), and he dials your number. It seems more deliberate, he thinks to himself, to dial the number. If you were there you'd tell him that deliberate in this case means slow, and that it is too cold to waste time on sentiment. But you are only watching. Pick up, he mumbles-- no, prays-- under his breath, bouncing slightly, shoulders pulled together, shivering. It rings once, twice, eleven times. But you're asleep. What was your teacher's name? No matter. He leaves a message, and hangs up, considering calling again. He dials. Across the street a woman walks her dog. He puts the phone in his pocket instead, climbing back inside, away from the orange-glowing street-lamps, the snow, the cold, the woman walking her dog, who, (he shakes his head to himself) is likely freezing. He goes inside, takes off his shoes, overcoat, socks. Climbs back into bed. The person stirs. The boy that you-- is loved the right word?-- says shhh in the way he would when you'd joke with him at his expense. Tonight he is not smiling. It is too cold, too lonely, too crowded in this bed, and you are miles away and too asleep to pick up. He closes his eyes, still very much awake, thinking of the voicemail. Tomorrow, he mumbles--no, promises--tomorrow. [[But it isn't real]].

<img src="images/streetlights.gif" width="433" height="325"> <<replacelink>> Of course it isn't. <<becomes>> How could it be? <<becomes>> What would that make you? <<becomes>> Who would that make you? <<becomes>> But no, it isn't real. <<becomes>> [[--|But it isn't real]] <<endreplacelink>> <<set $dream to true>>

<img src="images/streetlights.gif" width="433" height="325"> [[You could wait for him.]]

<img src="images/streetlights.gif" width="433" height="325"> [[Were you restraining yourself out of a true desire for a change of scenery or a sense of obligation?]]

<img src="images/streetlights.gif" width="433" height="325"> [[Did it matter the motive if you were going to move regardless of the reason, out of sheer stubbornness?]]

You used to think that you would write about it all, maybe turn these anxieties into a script. You wanted to direct when you were younger. But it made you feel like a hack to write about your own life so much. Who would want to read that? No one wants to hear a girl complain about having a college degree and opportunity. You aren't special; your experiences hardly unique. Why did you want to write anyway? To work through the whole of it? To conceptualize it? To carve out a space that was more concrete than your own mind but less real-feeling than in a conversation with another person? Because you didn't know who you would tell about it? Because writing about thinking seemed to make more sense than thinking about thinking? Because you wanted people to look at you? Did you hope that they would read what you said and relate? Why did you have to write it; why not just [[say]] it?

[[You know why.]]

It is easier to write it and pass it off as fiction. Easier to talk about things in theory, as a story, as a dream, where you could say, "No, it's not about me." In a dream, all characters are you, and in your writing it is no different. And maybe that's why you don't write, you think. You don't want people to wonder about your characters, because you don't want them to wonder about you. But you've thought about this countless times. At some point you have to change something. Somehow. [[You suppose.]]

[[But is that so bad?]]

<<replacelink>> Maybe you are fated to this. <<becomes>> But to say so feels like a betrayal, a concession, <<becomes>> an acknowledgement, a resignation. <<becomes>> It is unfair to blame fate when you know it's your fault. <<becomes>> You need to take responsibility. You need to learn from it. <<becomes>> You need to carve out a space for yourself, and in a way that leaves less room for fear and introversion and doubt. <<becomes>> [[You need to get out of this in-between.]] <<endreplacelink>>

Because for all of your griping about being on the edge of everything, you know that only you are to blame for your precarious position. It is you who refuses to reach out. It is you who hasn't attempted to connect with others. You are afraid that they won't like you, so you had allow yourself to stay silent. You think of the people whom you admire, all of them out of reach somehow. Is this how things are to be? For all of your wonderings and your hopes you are still here, alone, in your car, the cool darkness enveloping you, comforting you, hiding you, allowing yourself space to breathe but also seclusion from everybody. [[...]]

<img src="images/stoplight.gif" width="433" height="325"> You get to the campus and feel a wave of relief wash over you. You are at the place that has functioned as your second home for the past 45 months. You turn left (the stoplight that is always so short), coast past the parking structure that always had room, the coffee cart outside (once it started to pour unexpectedly and you were deeply concerned for those working), the perpendicularly-branching stretch of street always overgrown with bougainvillea, ivy climbing up the apartment buildings' walls, and pedestrians. [[It was empty now.]]

<img src="images/stoplight.gif" width="433" height="325"> You drive on, a right turn, down a small and curving hill, coast through the stop sign, past another structure. Do you [[park]]? Or keep [[driving]]?

You pull into the structure and note how strange it is that somewhere so familiar can feel so new after a few weeks away. You drive to the top floor as you always do-- did-- and park in the spot that you parked in on your first day. You get out of the car and step onto the pavement. The paint marking the parking spot is glossy in the lamplight, but you can tell that it is chipped and wearing off. You want to take your shoes off and walk barefoot but hesitate. You ignore the impulse and [[walk|sdsu section]] down the stairs, over the footbridge, towards the pond.

<img src="images/stoplight.gif" width="433" height="325"> Your permit is expired anyway. You continue onwards, foot on the gas pedal. Down the hill, past the geology building, past Arts and Letters, past the parking lot in which two tons of books has sat for the past two years, waiting to be burned, cleared away to make room for a computer lab of some sort. One of your science-oriented classmates once asked you your thoughts on the matter, expecting you to have an opinion. You didn't. She balked at you. "Aren't you a writer or something?" Or something. A long time ago maybe. (You're too young to be thinking about your "youth.") You continue onwards, now uphill. Past the sign, past the marquee, past the entrance. The freeway [[ahead.|freeway2]]

<img src="images/gif7.gif" width="433" height="325"> You like this onramp because of its size. No lanes merging, no turns. It's smooth, and takes you towards your home, towards the ocean, towards the things that matter to you when considering this city, to the things that give you pause when considering leaving it. [[You are sick of hesistating.|8C]]

<img src="images/offramp.gif" width="433" height="325"> The turn always catches you off guard; you brake late and your body shifts left in the seat, thrown by the sudden movement. Here, there is familiarity in unfamiliarity. You accelerate. A small part of you wants to test your limits. You feel rather reckless, like you did after the funeral. But you are also tired, worn, beat; recklessness would be lost on you. You reckon for a moment that you do not feel like yourself. It's funny because there technically isn't a time in which you're not yourself. Maybe, you think, it's that you wish you were a different self. You are not currently your <<if $ideal is false>>[[ideal self.]]<</if>><<if $ideal>>idealized self.<</if>> But how to become that[[...|8E2]]

<img src="images/gif7.gif" width="433" height="325"> What did she look like? What did she have to say? Who did she talk to? Who did she love? What did she want? Where did she go? How did she know how to get there? How is it that we are supposed to learn anything when we cannot know what it is that we do not know? By driving [[forward|8E3]], you think.

<img src="images/offramp.gif" width="433" height="325"> [[If you knew, you wouldn't be here.|8E3]]

<img src="images/gif7.gif" width="433" height="325"> Ahead of you on the highway are semis and lights that make the span of road better-lit than a football game. Orange signs: Detour, Detour ahead, Take detour. The reflective tape on the traffic cones is wearing thin. Or your vision is going. A mental note to call the optometrist... a soft right, another [[exit|8C]], the construction workers yelling to each other words that you're unable to hear over the truck, your own engine, the bright, bright lights...<<set $eight to true>>

<img src="images/gif11.gif" width="433" height="325"> <<if $eight is true>> Oh, but you quite like this exit.<</if>> There is a tunnel along this freeway with lights inside; you hold your breath to make a wish while underneath. You [[inhale]].

<img src="images/tunnel.gif" width="433" height="325"> The last time you were here was with him. [[You were driving him home.|prejpb]]

<img src="images/tunnel.gif" width="433" height="325"> Seventeen and memorizing passages: <div id="lit">“The worst thing that could possibly happen to anybody would be to not be used for anything by anybody. Thank you for using me, even though I didn't want to be used by anybody.”</div> [[On the phone|on the phone]]: "it's brilliant. No, Malachi is not the best character..." etc. <<set $vonnegut to true>>

<img src="images/gif6.gif" width="433" height="325"> Which, as a recent graduate, is rather unfortunate for you. You don't have any real plan. You don't know what you really want. You are afraid. (Very afraid.) And you don't know what to [[do.|anxietycloud]]

<img src="images/gif8.gif" width="433" height="325"> <<replacelink>> So instead you drive. In ten years, will this matter? You don't want to think of it. You turn your gaze instead toward the sky. <<becomes>> You cannot see a single star. <<becomes>> Darkness, eternally. <<becomes>> Nothingness, infinitely. <<becomes>> And you are terrified. <<becomes>> You can feel it in your throat. <<becomes>> <nobr><<if $music is true>>The music does not match the feeling of terror you have.<</if>></nobr> It is terror. <<becomes>> You felt this once before, while driving. You were certain that you would die. It was melodramatic, and you knew at the time; you know it now. It's panic without cause. But it is still horrifying. <<becomes>> You need to pull over but you can't. <<becomes>> [[...|941]] <<endreplacelink>>

<img src="images/gif3.gif" width="433" height="325"> [[An exit.|945]]

<img src="images/gv.gif" width="433" height="325"> You refrain from pulling over when you are on city streets again. It's a small neighborhood and you'd rather get back on the road. Maybe you just should go [[home.|946]]

<img src="images/gif2.gif" width="433" height="325"> Once on the freeway again, you feel calmer. You pass the navy base on your way back; on a different, adjacent stretch of road this time. You are back in the familiar. <<if $path2 is true>>[[You're back to a place well-travelled.|8C]]<</if>> <<if $path3 is true>> Again, another choice. [[Continue on?|805]] or [[Take the exit?|805]] <</if>>

<img src="images/streetlights.gif" width="433" height="325"> Probably not. Maybe you were wasting your time worrying. There's no use in thinking about [[alternate universes|nope]]. <<set $au2 to true>>

<img src="images/gif2.gif" width="433" height="325"> <<if $path1 is true>> [[East?|8E]] [[Or West?|8W]] <</if>> <<if $path3 is true>> [[Continue on?|805]] or [[Take the exit?|805]] <</if>> <<set $ideal to false>>

<img src="images/gif2.gif" width="433" height="325"> You head downtown. It's not far, and you take the exit that leaves you in a neighborhood adjacent to your favorite one. The coffee shop you visited with your friend is a half mile back on your left. [[The airport passes on your right.|mg]]

<div id="title">DRIVING ALONE AT NIGHT</div> <div id="begin">[[BEGIN]]</div><nobr><div id="byline">BY [[RILEY WILSON|http://www.riley-wilson.com/]]</div><div id="credits">[[CREDITS]]</div></nobr> <link href='https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Oxygen:300' rel='stylesheet' type='text/css'>

All of the text and images seen here were made by Riley Wilson (except for one Vonnegut quote, from <i>Sirens of Titan</i>, and another from <i>Mrs. Dalloway</i> by Virginia Woolf). [[back.|titlepage]]

The air hangs low and smells of roses and jasmine. It reminds you of something that won't quite [[materialize]] before you.

<img src="images/fave1260.gif" width="433" height="325"> A song to replace the one about Virginia Woolf. One more hopeful in message but more sad in creation, thought up suddenly while driving home from your first funeral: “I’m so hopeful for the future, I’m so hopeful for the future." On repeat. At first, the notion of it in your head seemed sarcastic, especially given the weight of the situation-- eighteen and all over the place. After two hours (the streetlights going by and looping looping looping) you believed it. Tonight, the same lights. Tonight, the same home, although accompanied by a certain brand of terror that corresponds to the realization that things are (once again) coming to an end, that the largeness will be replaced. You are still on the edge, on the periphery of something you cannot yet name. You [[drive|end1]] towards a place that you will not always call home.

<img src="images/hillcrest.gif" width="433" height="325"> The view reminds you of a day years ago. You were eighteen, in this same car. Windows rolled down, wandering again, but in the daylight. The authorial part of you wants to contemplate that as a metaphor. No. You pass the apartment building that always gives you [[pause,]] with windows that are large and reflect the sun and that you imagine look lovely from the inside.

<img src="images/fave1260.gif" width="433" height="325"> The ocean on your right, a chasm, an ink stain, a raven and a writing desk in the night, the moonlight stippling the waves. Interminable. <i>La plage. Tu en avais voulu faire de natation.</i> You studied your summer-class French at this beach, always focusing on the most pragmatic words for the situation. <i>Soleil. Maillot de bain. L'été. Juin. Ensuite, juillet. Et après, août. Et la mer.</i> Deep <i>bleu. Comme la ciel. Juste comme ton livre.</i> (<i>L'étranger</i>, where the narrator kills a man at a beach, in an overwhelmingly French-existentialist way.) And in between Mersault and memorization, a repose. The ocean. <i>[[La mer]]</i>.

It wasn't-- it's not simply that it’s a question of choice, but of your own potential. You don’t think you can do it, and you don’t know how you will do it. Whether the “it” is <<replacelink>> grad school <<becomes>> or <<becomes>> moving away <<becomes>> or <<becomes>> finding and committing to a job <<becomes>> or <<becomes>> something as simple as asking out a person with whom your thoughts have been consumed for a good six or seven weeks… <<endreplacelink>> It doesn’t matter. You are incredibly and increasingly frustrated with yourself. What's worse, you feel bound by the [[obligation|gah]] to grow into the person that everyone expects you to be.

<img src="images/gif6.gif" width="433" height="325"> A generalized night time anxiety seeps into the car. You inhale and picture it clearly: dense black cloud, flowing under the door, through the window, in from the air system, surging through the speakers. It is moist, cool, and yet somehow warm and familiar, like coastal fog: gloomy but insulating. Age-old questions: what if you don't meet someone? Ever? What if you've missed your chance? What if you screw it all up somehow? What if you can't find a job? What if you find a job and hate it? What if all that you've worked for is for naught? What if the choices you made can't get you anywhere? These thoughts cycle endlessly, relentlessly. [[You don't know how to fix it|do.]].

It's odd to be filled with such nostalgic longing for a place that you'd resolved to hate in your youth (a word that you initially used ironically but now use frequently despite its inaccuracy, given your still-young age). You recently gave a "tour" to a group of children-- no, they weren't children technically. You showed a few soon-to-be college students around. Your brother and his friends. You had forgotten what it was like to be so new. "The library is open 24 hours!" "People can skateboard to class?!" You [[smiled]].

<<replacelink>> The <<becomes>> freeway <<becomes>> stretches <<becomes>> on, <<becomes>> a promise. <<becomes>> A climbing speedometer. <<becomes>> On the edge of something. <<becomes>> Lights upon lights upon lights, and past that, darkness. <<becomes>> The outermost edge. <<becomes>> An offramp. <<becomes>> Making out shapes in the dark. <<becomes>> Carving out a space. <<becomes>> Continuing what you started without realizing it. <<becomes>> A fractured and confused identity. <<becomes>> Ambivalence. <<becomes>> Turning on to your street. <<becomes>> Hestitation. <<becomes>> Locking the car, walking to the door, lingering on the porch, in the light. <<becomes>> Mosquitos overhead. <<becomes>> Looking back, towards the car. <<becomes>> Darkness. <<becomes>> [[Here, a place in the middle.]] <<endreplacelink>>

<img src="images/fave1260.gif" width="433" height="325"> Your legs under you, so quick that you thought you might fall running down to the shore. Feet hitting the shocking coldness before you ever actually fell. Straight out, under the waves, always trying to go deep enough that your navel grazed the ocean floor while the shore broke overhead, a gentle roar, something more constant than anything in your life, louder than your own insecurities. Indeed, here you had less insecurities. Here, you were invincible (save for a jellyfish sting that rendered you blistered and bitter and reeking of vinegar). Here, you swam out far enough that you could float on your back, uninterrupted. Here, you were at peace, and you liked yourself and your body and what it could do. Once you got over the initial horror that arises from realizes the politics of being a teenage girl in a bikini, you were invincible. [[Tonight you will not be going swimming.]]

<img src="images/fave1260.gif" width="433" height="325"> Tonight you will go home and think about the things that you have been trying not to think about. You need to though, for the sake of growing, becoming. (What a naive thing to say.) You know it, and think about it as you turn your steering wheel to the left, away from the shore (your driving instructor accused you of having bad form for not crossing your arms when making that maneuver). Acceleration. Up the hill, east, away from one expanse and towards another, more metaphorical one. Decisions to make. How things will grow. [[An onramp|ending]].

The (was "pale fire" a reference to the moon?) glints off the backs of the koi as you approach the pond, the first thing that you ever came to admire at this school. Hours squandered-- no, that implied waste, instead, savored-- sitting here, on the grass (you move from your crouch to be seated and spread your legs out in front of you). The books you read here. The naps you took. The books you read just before napping, and then waking up to the sun shattering-- no, too harsh a word-- to the sun atomizing(?) through the leaves. One of the few places in the world where you felt content for your own sake, without another's approval, content in your solitude and with [[fictional characters.]]

<img src="images/hillcrest.gif" width="433" height="325"> Anyway. You were wandering, and hit this split of streets. In the distance was the bridge that you hated to drive over but frequented nonetheless, especially when with your siblings, especially when your CD player was working and blaring Fleetwood Mac's "Landslide." To the right, the tower of your favorite building in the city, the place you had felt most at home at the time (you hadn't started university). It made you think of New York; it seemed as if everyone had just moved there. These were not the structures of that city, but you loved them (and dearly). You had never felt that way before about this [[place]] despite your longstanding residency. It was magnificent. <<set $ks to false>>

You had wanted to cry while reading Woolf. But why? You wanted Sally and Clarissa to be together. That was it. You felt cheated. You consoled yourself with a line from the novel: <div id="lit">"Still, the sun was hot. Still, one got over things."</div> You shut your book and went to class, suddenly transported out of this constructed world, thrust back into reality, humming silently to yourself a ditty you had created with a friend: "Virginia, Virginia, a room of your own/ with rocks in your pockets, you've left me alone." It was rather morbid, especially given the weather: the sun shining down, the flowers in bloom. It always came back to the flowers, the only things you noticed when walking. You still notice tonight, despite the darkness. Coming back to the present, you realize that the ground beneath you is cold. You get up, continuing your [[walk.]]

The streetlamps emit orange light and cast a horror-movie glow over everything. You know that you shouldn't take such pleasure in it, but you can't help it. Acknowledging your past, your education, your good fortune makes you feel like... if you play your cards right... your whole life could look like the ending montage of some cheery movie, all sunbeams and soft breezes. [[But you don't know how to make it reality|doubt]], and you dislike that you've somehow become someone who is optimistic out of blind wishfulness and fear of realism rather than genuine belief that things will be okay. Was it cheating, like that? To be like that, think like that, hope in such a debased and deteriorated way?

And you will, one day, you hope. But not right now. You head back towards your car, taking your shoes off when you reach the pavement of the parking structure's top floor, where it's well-lit enough to ensure that you won't step on anything. The ground still barely holds on to the heat from earlier in the day. Next to your car, you can feel that the parking spot paint is in fact chipped. You take one last look around. The building across the way that housed your favorite department. A thing of the past. You open the car door and sit. [[You start your car.]]

Down down down down through the levels of the parking structure. All orange light, all hard turns, all echoes. Down the hill, past the geology building, past Arts and Letters, past the parking lot in which two tons of books have sat for the past two years, waiting to be burned, cleared away to make room for a computer lab of some sort. One of your science-oriented classmates once asked you your thoughts on the matter, expecting you to have an opinion. You didn't. She balked at you. "Aren't you a writer or something?" Or something. You continue onwards, now uphill. Past the sign, past the marquee, past the entrance. The freeway [[ahead.|freeway2]]

And learning to embrace it, instead of being consumed by it. <<timed 5s>> the end. [[back to the title page.|titlepage]] <</timed>>

<img src="images/hillcrest.gif" width="433" height="325"> Past the park now, and the museums, and the spot where you jaywalked <<if $ks is false>>[[once|ks]]<</if>><<if $ks is true>>once<</if>>, and the farmers market that always had the best plums, the kind you ate in the summer while driving to the beach. Past the baseball field, past the library, on the road that inevitably lead back to the freeway [[and towards home.]]

<img src="images/hillcrest.gif" width="433" height="325"> (with a boy, on a date; it was raining and you took your glasses off and his hand was on your back while you crossed the street and later you did not kiss him and instead drove home in the rain and thought about other things, about the books you needed to buy for class, and the things you wanted to write about. You knew you could not date him simply because it was convenient. That would be unfair. Were you sad because it was done with him in particular? Or because once again you found yourself drifting, alone, restless? You knew but you don't know. You say that a lot; "I don't know." You wanted to become comfortable living with uncertainty. The perpetual question mark.) [[Anyway.|place]] <<set $ks to true>>

<img src="images/gif13.gif" width="433" height="325"> Your gas is lower than you'd like it to be, and you know you should be headed back. But the sound of the road as you go from pavement to asphalt gives you pause. [[One last detour|ocean]].

<img src="images/streetlights.gif" width="433" height="325"> You were hopeless in the car, unable to speak to your parents and siblings, unable to articulate the feelings that you expected you shared, the things you hadn't been able to articulate at the time (you still can't). You didn't know how to react, so you leaned your head against the window and looked up at the lamps, breezing by. There was constancy in the way they rushed past you-- in the way you rushed past them. It was soothing and monotonous, at once comforting you and bringing about [[restlessness.]] <<set $boy to false>> <<set $parties to false>> <<set $eight to false>> <<set $hs to false>>

<img src="images/tunnel.gif" width="433" height="325"> You fell asleep, and woke up to the sound of your friends talking about sleeping arrangements. Your head on his chest, his arm around you, so incredibly comfortable that you had forgotten where you were. Upon realizing where and next to whom you were sleeping, you jolted awake. "I'm sorry," you said. "Hmm? Why?" You didn't know why. Your host friend offered you a blanket, and you walked to her room. Minutes later she came in too, turned off the light. "Good night," she chirped. You couldn't sleep. It was less comfortable there, and the earlier doze had left you awake. Beneath the covers, you could feel your hands shaking slightly. As you did [[before|jpb]], you thought again that it was all ending soon. <<set $jpbnik to true>>

The roses were in full bloom, each petal a shout, the entire campus a cacophony. The gratitude and the certainty of it all. For all of your current disdain, you are thankful to have been shouted at. More than that, you are grateful that you had room to breathe, to carve out a space for yourself (even if a misshapen one that you are often wary of-- it is enough that you were handed tools, that you were encouraged to [[explore]] it for yourself).

<img src="images/hillcrest.gif" width="433" height="325"> Most recently you were here last week, when the sky was turning from periwinkle to azure and the glow of the electronic light inside of the apartment three windows to the right and on the fourth floor from the top mirrored the color. You wondered what the people inside are like; a couple always fighting because the woman is a cynic and doesn't understand how her boyfriend can watch the Price Is Right in a non-ironic way, while he is genuinely happy to see others excited about something. [[Or maybe that's not who lives there.]]

<img src="images/hillcrest.gif" width="433" height="325"> [[Maybe]] it's two middle-aged women whose respective sets of parents think that the other woman is their daughter's "roommates" but really they share a bed and love each other dearly and the one that's a high school Spanish teacher spends her lunch breaks reading plot summaries of movies to discuss with her film junkie wife who has more of a stomach for horror and gore and spends her days writing a lucrative blog about it, a blog so lucrative that her wife doesn't need to work (and only does because she loves the kids), and there's no reason that she'd ever need a roommate, but she's lived with the secret for so long that it feels like a security blanket, and besides, all of their friends here know, and as you drive below they're rewatching the last installment of Saw and the teacher is trying to grade papers but keeps flinching, to the point that the red pen has ironically bled all over the tests, which she knows will deeply consume her precocious students who have written three times the flashcards one would ever need to learn the difference from por and para.

<img src="images/hillcrest.gif" width="433" height="325"> Or [[maybe|maybe2]] it's the boy you admired at the library a few months back. Green jacket and still hands and shoulders pulled forward over his book, sitting near the window so that the setting sun warmed up the focus painted on his face, so that you thought you could go talk to him and strike up a conversation. But you didn't, you couldn't, you walked to move closer and stopped, frozen, afraid, small. You're unsure whether he even noticed you there; it's probably best if he didn't, if instead he walked home and finished his book and returned it two days late and never paid the fee, because they couldn't really make you unless it exceeded a certain amount (you thought so at least. But maybe he was the type to rack up late fees). And now he's in the apartment full of blue, and no doubt with someone else, no doubt smiling and less serious than that day.

<img src="images/hillcrest.gif" width="433" height="325"> Or maybe it's someone who looks just like you and wearing clothes just like yours who, by some blind luck, is not you. And she reads the same books as you but is happier, more sure of herself. [[You knew it was silly.|balboa2]]

<img src="images/stoplight.gif" width="433" height="325"> Silence is nice sometimes. You pull out of the lot, onto the city street. You can head home, or you can hop on the freeway. You sort of feel like driving aimlessly. [[Home]]. [[Freeway]].